Job Training Improvement Act of 2005

JOB TRAINING IMPROVEMENT ACT OF 2005 -- (House of Representatives - March 02, 2005)

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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I very much appreciate the gentleman yielding me this time.

Mr. Chairman, there are many problems with this bill. I choose to focus on the Scott amendment because it involves a matter in what I think I can safely say is my personal confidence.

I have heard title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act called out here repeatedly. It was my great privilege to enforce title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act as Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and I have an obligation to step forward to plead with my friends on the other side to make this a bipartisan bill, because its chances of becoming so at least on this matter should be great.

In fact, it is such a good idea to have faith-based organizations involved in the programs of the Federal Government that we have been doing it for decades with billions of dollars to show for it. There may be some ways, I will be the first to say, there are some ways in which this could be strengthened and expanded. But I do not know whose idea it was to allow religious organizations to discriminate. I do not think it could possibly have been the idea of the faith-based communities themselves. I do not believe that churches and synagogues and mosques are stepping forward to say, Even though we have an extraordinary ability to hire only our own folks, we want to make sure we use public dollars to hire only our co-religious partners.

If the language is kept as it is, we will have the first nullification, the first repeal, of civil rights laws since they were initially passed 40 years ago. To our credit, we have steadily built those laws into legislation that came after it, and, yes, into the Workforce Investment Act. We are required to do that. Title VI requires us to do that, the 14th amendment requires us to do that. It required us to do so when the Workforce Investment Act was passed, and it requires us to do so now.

Essentially what the bill states now is that you can hire only Lutherans or Muslims with your own money, and you can hire only Catholics and Jews with the people's money. That is a huge departure from everything that is built into title VII.

I was Chair of the agency and brought forward religious discrimination guidelines. We worked very hard to strengthen the law against religious discrimination and went the extra mile because of the free exercise clause. Thus, today religious organizations, a church or synagogue, for example, can do what no union or business can do. It cannot only use its money to hire its religious members in religious positions; it can use its own money to hire even their own members in secular positions. This is the maximum in religious freedom that is allowed under the Constitution.

Now, if you want to take on public responsibilities, I cannot understand why anybody would say you would not want to spend that money in accordance with the public responsibility in each and every respect. That is how it has always been done. Why the departure now?

If you want public dollars, do so in accordance with public law. That law requires no discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or religion. It would be a horrible setback to now come forward and say that you can in fact discriminate on the basis of religion, of all things. And that is what you would be doing, because, as everybody knows, race and religious identity track one another very, very closely.

Today, when black people go to Catholic Charities or to Lutheran Services they see people of every race and color working there. And do you know what? I have not heard these organizations and the many other faith-based organizations complain that in order to serve my African American community, they sometimes reach out and find black people who are not Catholic and who are not Lutheran, because they do not ask what they are.

We have resisted pressures in this House for repeal of affirmative action, for repeal of goals. Surely we can resist the role back to the bad old days of religious discrimination and a violation of title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

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